Category Archives: iPhone (all)
QuickComposer – iOS 5 Notification Center Widget That Makes Composing Tweets And More, Quicker
Those third-party Notification Center Widgets for the iPhone just keep on coming don’t they? The latest, QuickComposer, brings a handy shortcut to composing new emails and more right from within iOS 5′s Notification Center.
Created by well-known iOS skinner iHaz3, QuickComposer basically offers up to five tappable icons which, once prodded, launch users right into the required apps.
The five icons represent the following five functions:
- Email – create a new email using the default email account
- SMS – create a new SMS or iMessage
- Twitter – takes users straight to the new tweet composing screen inside the official Twitter app
- Notes – allows users to create a new note using the Notes app
- Reminders – takes users to the new reminder creation screen inside Reminders.
QuickComposer will be available for download from the jailbreak App Store, Cydia and we suggest you keep tabs on iHaz3′s Twitter account for release information.
QuickComposer is just another in a long line of iOS 5 Notification Center widgets to come out of the jailbreak community since the first beta arrived two weeks ago.
With no information as to whether Apple will
iOS 5 Vs Windows Phone ‘Mango’: Mobile Safari Beats Internet Explorer 9 Mobile In HTML5 Speed Test [video]
When Microsoft previewed the next version of Windows Phone codenamed “Mango” at MIX 2011 last month, Microsoft showed off Internet Explorer 9 mobile with hardware acceleration support blowing away Mobile Safari on iPhone 4.
It hasn’t taken Apple too long to respond. WinRumors reports that Apple has substantially improved the HTML5 performance in iOS 5, which beats Internet Explorer 9 mobile.
According to the original test carried out by Microsoft, the upcoming Windows Phone update renders HTML5 at 24 frames per second, whereas iPhone 4 on iOS 4.3.x rendered HTML5 at only 2 frames per second.
But according to WinRumors, iPhone 4 on iOS 5 renders HTML5 at 31 frames per second. It is not clear whether Apple has also added hardware acceleration support to mobile Safari in iOS 5 for the substantial jump in performance, but it looks like Apple has upped the ante with iOS 5. iOS 5 also brings Nitro Javascript Engine performance improvements to home screen web apps in iOS 5.
You can checkout the demo video of the original test by Microsoft below (from last month):
Kanex AirBlue: A portable Bluetooth music solution for iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad
Kanex is well-known for their cable solutions; items like the Mini DisplayPort to HDMI cable are great for pumping video from Macs to HDTVs.
Now the company has come out with the AirBlue Portable Bluetooth Music Receiver (US$49) — a small device that you plug into speakers, AV receivers, automobile AUX ports, and other common audio inputs — and then beam music to from your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad.
Kanex provided one of these small black disc-like receivers for testing purposes, and it’s a handy little device for getting rid of a few more cables in your life … although you will need a cable to connect it to your audio input.
Setup and pairing
Setup of the AirBlue is a piece of cake. For a cord-cutting solution, the AirBlue comes with a lot of little cables (below). One of these is a standard USB to Mini-USB cable that’s used to charge the unit. Charging the AirBlue will take about 4 – 5 hours, and once it is fully charged it will work for up to 20 hours.
When the Airblue is full of power, you can then take the little 2″ diameter flat black disc and plug one of the included cables into it — a standard 3.5 mm to 3.5 mm audio cable or a 3.5 mm to RL audio cable for speakers.
iPhone 4 most popular camera on Flickr
The iPhone 4 is now the most popular camera on Flickr, with a caveat. More on that in a minute. The smartphone’s 5-megapixel shooter has finally surpassed the Nikon D90 as the top camera on the photo hosting and sharing service. It’s been a slow and steady rise for the iPhone 4 since its debut in June 2010. The cameraphone now sits above the powerhouse D90, the Canon EOS 5D Mark II, Canon EOS Digital Rebel XSi and the EOS Rebel T1i.
Not surprisingly, the iPhone 4 also dominates in the cameraphone category with its closest competitor, the iPhone 3G, a distant second. The only non-Apple product in the top five cameraphones is the Android-powered HTC Evo 4G which sits at the bottom along with the iPod touch.
This isn’t the first time an iPhone
Scroll Pages Infinitely Though Your iPhone’s Home Screen Using Wraparound [Cydia Tweak]
The beauty of jailbreak tweaks is that they tend to fix niggling little flaws or add much needed functionality to Apple’s iOS mobile operating system. Despite 4 years of iteration, there are still a few things that we don’t like about the OS that powers the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch, but one such irritation is fixed by a jailbreak tweak going by the name of Wraparound.
What Wraparound does is both extremely simple and much requested by the community – it allows users to continue swiping through home screen pages in a loop. Reach the last screen of icons? Just keep on going and you’ll be back at the beginning with Spotlight ready and waiting to do your bidding.
As our friends at iPhoneDownloadBlog point out, this little tweak is simplicity personified. No settings, no activations, it just installs and works.
The only downside to Wraparound that we’ve noticed so far is the somewhat steep asking price of $1.99 on the jailbreak App Store, Cydia. While we agree a couple of Dollars isn’t exactly going to break the bank, its apparent simplicity does make us unsure about the price.
Once again it’s the jailbreak community putting together ways to improve Apple’s own operating system beyond what it can manage itself. Perhaps we’ll see Wraparound’s functionality find its way into a future release of iOS in the future.
Obviously you’ll need have a jailbroken
